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Yong

Yong Chavez

ABS-CBN News North America

<div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r2SwI0kTJog?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div><p>“I really appreciate the fact that you acknowledge that in this film, we do talk about things that people find very hard to talk about,” Kate Winslet says when I asked why she chose a family drama for her first time as a feature filmmaker. She appears on my computer screen looking not unlike a woman who has spent the past few years thinking deeply about the many shapes love takes, especially when it’s on its way out.</p><p>I spoke with her last year for the biographical film &quot;Lee,&quot; in which she played someone who has seen the ravages of war. Today, she’s talking about a film that she connected with from the start. It focuses on family, and it began, fittingly, close to home. Joe Anders, her talented son with filmmaker Sam Mendes, wrote the story.</p><p>Like many, my first encounter onscreen with Winslet came via a sinking ship. Her stardom was sealed aboard the Titanic, and her work just keeps getting better and better. In interviews, she is casual, warm, and there’s a quiet steadiness behind her eyes. The kind that makes one see how capable she is as a leader, and how she guided a film that reaches straight for the soft spots people tend to avoid.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1765527739157Kate directing 2.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Kate Winslet as director on the set of &#x27;Goodbye June.&#x27; <em>Netflix</em></span></span></span></div><p>&quot;Goodbye June,&quot; Winslet’s directorial debut, in which she also stars alongside Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, and Helen Mirren, arrives wrapped in drama, humor, and candor but anchored by the looming uncertainty of a mother’s (Mirren) declining health.</p><p>“I have always loved stories that feel real,” she says early in our conversation. I note that she’s not afraid to show tenderness and big, genuine emotions in her storytelling. She explains why this type of films resonates with her. “I really appreciate it when stories bring out emotions in me that I hadn’t realized were already there or that I hadn’t processed in my own way.”</p><p>“It mattered so much that we were talking about things people find very hard to talk about. To witness those kinds of conversations on a screen, and to make them feel real, was everything. Because then maybe audiences feel brave enough to have similar conversations in their own lives,” she adds.</p><p>Part of the film’s emotional charge comes from Winslet’s insistence on portraying end-of-life care workers with the tenderness and gravity they deserve. In the film, there’s a a character named Angel, played by Fisayo Akinade, a nurse who becomes a steadying force for the family. He’s someone who embodies the kind of dignity often overlooked but is familiar to us who have experienced the heartbreak of bearing witness to a terminally ill loved one.</p><p>“Palliative care workers, any nurse or doctor who works in end-of-life care, I think they deserve so much respect,” Winslet says. “They see it as a privilege to be able to give someone a good goodbye, to sit with someone who is unwell, to sit with the family members of people who are unwell. They process things that are very hard, and yet they keep all of that hidden in order to look after these people who are suffering.”</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1765527518436still 4 medical.png" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">A scene from &#x27;Goodbye June.&#x27; <em>Netflix</em></span></span></span></div><p>She shares how she was inspired by them. “It mattered so much that we really saw that, so that we can appreciate it and the importance of the work that those people do, because they are extraordinary.”</p><p>Despite working with a heavyweight cast, Winslet says her greatest surprise came from the smallest performers on set. The children in &quot;Goodbye June,&quot; including a boy with special-needs whose real first name, Benjamin, matched his character’s, shifted the tone of the production in ways she didn’t expect.</p><p>“With children, unless they’re very gifted, you can’t really teach them how to act,” she says. “But you can show them how to be. You can offer them a space where they can totally be themselves, free and spontaneous and natural.”</p><p>Her solution was simple and quietly brilliant: the kids only addressed one another by their character names, even off-camera. “They never got confused,” Winslet says, smiling. “And it meant that when they didn’t know the cameras were rolling, everything they were doing was usable as part of the story.”</p><p>She reaches for the right words and lands on a soft truth: “Children bring the joy. And I think the thing that surprised me the most was how much they embraced this experience and immersed themselves in it right alongside these grown-up, heavyweight actors.”</p><p>Toward the end of the film, Timothy Spall performs “Georgia,” a quiet emotional knockout that has been lodging itself in audiences’ chests since the earliest screenings.</p><p>“It’s killer,” Winslet says instantly. “Absolutely killer. It was very, very hard directing him in that scene because he felt it so acutely himself. He’s absolutely wonderful.”</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1765527568877Kate carpet pose.png" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Kate Winslet at the red carpet premiere of &#x27;Goodbye June.&#x27; <em>Netflix</em></span></span></span></div><p>It’s the kind of moment &quot;Goodbye June&quot; trades in: the ache beneath everyday life. It’s no small feat to make a film that feels simultaneously gentle and emotionally fearless, but Winslet seems unburdened by the contradiction. She’s been navigating emotional extremes on screen for decades. Now she’s simply steering the ship herself.</p><p>&quot;Goodbye June&quot; is in select theaters starting December 12 and debuts on Netflix on December 24.</p><div><br/></div><div><em>Here in Hollywood comes out every Friday. Have a question about Hollywood celebrities? Contact Yong on Instagram: @yongchavez</em></div>

<p>Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with '<i>Goodbye June</i>,' a family drama that tackles love, loss, and the quiet heroism of end-of-life care workers.</p>

Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with ' Goodbye June ,' a family drama that tackles love, loss, and the quiet heroism of end-of-life care workers.

Here in Hollywood: Kate Winslet on directing, saying goodbye to loved ones, and the heroism of palliative care workers

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Here in Hollywood: Kate Winslet on directing, saying goodbye to loved ones, and the heroism of palliative care workers

Yong Chavez,

ABS-CBN News North America

Published December 12, 2025 05:13 PM PHT

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Here in Hollywood

Yong Chavez

Goodbye June

Kate Winslet

Netflix

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